I don’t know if you’ve ever heard Macca on a Sunday morning on ABC, but he has quite the following (I read he has about two million listeners every week). This morning someone on the Dumbleyung Bluebird committee called in to speak to him about an upcoming event, and mentioned their website which I helped to develop. I spent the morning watching the real-time Google Analytics for that page and boy, was it interesting.
ABC radio is broadcast in staggered times so each state hears the same thing at the same local time. That meant that I could see the immediate visits in Sydney and Melbourne after it was on the radio in NSW. As the broadcast caught up, visits were recorded in Adelaide and surrounding areas, and finally across WA. It essentially showed a wave of interest slowly sweeping the country, with over 90 new visits in one day. That’s not bad for a little community website.
I could see which pages were visited and for how long. I could also see what type of device the website was being viewed on. It seems on Sundays there are a lot of people listening to Macca and playing on their iPads at the breakfast table, because tablet use was about 70%.
Real time gives you such a detailed glimpse into the people you’re talking to. Demographics, behaviour, and even the keywords people are using to find your site.
As someone in the marketing industry, I find it pretty amazing.
As a consumer/viewer I find it pretty darn creepy.